“It is not easy, but possible to practice.”, said all first-grade students of underground mining today. Their training in the VR laboratory stirred strong emotions. “I wanted to try myself to match the students, and everyone wants to deal with the tasks and do as many of them as possible.”, says Adela Jelonek, a teacher of mining subjects at School Complex No. 6 in Jastrzębie-Zdrój. “But I have no doubts that virtual reality will influence employee safety in the future. For example, it will help you remember that you need to have goggles and a helmet and that safety is crucial. Especially that what I say in class not always gets through to all students because it is only theory.”

The VR laboratory at JSW Szkolenie i Górnictwo is intended to help enhance not only miners’ safety but also their professional qualifications. “The VR laboratory is supposed to support the training process”, says Gabriel Cyrulik, JSW SIG President of the Management Board. “It is even simpler because we can prepare virtually any level of training via the application. Today, also the students benefited from that.”

The VR application displays commands, you need to operate controllers, and red arrows indicate the place of performing a given action, and, what is important, tasks need to be carried out in the correct order. “Students become familiar with a portion of the mining work, even if only in virtual reality. Although the actual conditions of the underground work are different, they can feel like they were at the coalface,” explains Roman Siuda, Deputy Manager of the OSH Department at JSW SiG. Aldona Urbanek, Manager of the Training and Adaptation Department at JSW SiG adds: “We hope that the emotions accompanying the work with the application will stimulate memory. Such an application engages all senses, students are supposed to experience all that, make decisions, and so they learn and remember. It is definitely not just a game.”